


i think this may be it for us

by dearzoemurphy



Category: New Girl (TV 2011)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Episode: s03e20 Mars Landing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29370228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearzoemurphy/pseuds/dearzoemurphy
Summary: It was strange, settling onto a pile of blankets to the right of Nick’s burned up bed and knowing that it might be her last time sleeping in his room. Jess almost wished that Schmidt wouldn’t have been in her room, that she wouldn’t have known when her last night with Nick was coming.They exchanged ‘good night’s, maybe for the last time. At least like this, where Jess reached over and turned off the light and then they lay in darkness. Together, but not quite.Jess and Nick try to sleep following their breakup.
Relationships: Jessica Day/Nick Miller
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	i think this may be it for us

**Author's Note:**

> so I watched Mars Landing, made it through the first thirty seconds of the next episode, and decided that I had to write this before going on. hope you enjoy this sad little mess of my feelings!! <3

It was strange, settling onto a pile of blankets to the right of Nick’s burned up bed and knowing that it might be her last time sleeping in his room. Jess almost wished that Schmidt wouldn’t have been in her room, that she wouldn’t have known when her last night with Nick was coming.

They exchanged ‘good night’s, maybe for the last time. At least like this, where Jess reached over and turned off the light and then they lay in darkness. Together, but not quite.

Immediately, something felt wrong. It was the distance between them, the knowledge that the man she loved was on the other side of the bed. So close and yet, so far out of reach. What was it going to be like being a hallway away from him again? Torture, Jess suspected.

So she made a decision. A brave, unusually bold decision. She decided to call out to Nick.

“Hey,” she croaked.

“What is it?” he mumbled back, muffled by the pillow he’d buried his head into.

“Can I make an…odd request?”

“How odd, exactly? On a scale of one to ten.”

“Do you think you could…come over here? I’m not used to sleeping alone.”

Jess swore that she could hear him thinking. The gears turning his brain, the machines crunching all the numbers.

“Sure. Just until you fall asleep,” Nick agreed. Before she could say anything else, he was crawling over his charred mattress and to her, inelegantly sliding down into the open space she’d made for him.

“Do you want me to…?” he asked, vaguely gesturing as if he were about to wrap his arms around her, but stopping short of actually embracing her.

“Yes. Please.”

That was a mistake. Every decision Jess had made since coming back into their room felt like it had been a mistake, but this was the biggest one yet.

He was warm. He always was. His was the kind of warmth that enveloped; it was all-consuming and highly addictive. And Jess was an addict, bringing him to her lips for one final hit.

“You’re gonna be okay, right? We’re gonna be okay?” Nick asked as she threw her arms around him and buried her head against his chest.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course we will. It’ll take a lot more than this to take us out,” Jess assured him. (And herself.)

He laughed. A gentle laugh, one that washed over Jess in soft waves. “You’re right. We’ve made it this far.”

His choice of words got Jess thinking. Their constant arguing and lack of similarities was what finally made them call it, right? So what if she’d been able to make more concessions? Keep them afloat long enough to grow together, to get to the house on the lake where they could raise Reginald and his sister?

She’d made enough concessions. She’d remember that in the morning. But for now, her mind was content to linger on one particular issue; one that maybe had deserved the concession.

“You know, I think I was wrong about one thing, though.”

Nick pulled away just enough to look at her in the pale moonlight slipping in through his blinds, their bodies still pressed tightly together in the small space. “Jessica Day, admitting that she was wrong about something?! I’ve gotta mark this day on my calendar.”

She swatted at his arm. “Stop it! I’m being serious.”

He chuckled, but quickly collected himself after realizing that Jess meant business. “Okay, then. What do you think you were wrong about?”

“We should have stayed in Mexico,” she said. She let the words hang in the air for a moment, let the impact truly settle in. “It was crazy, and…absurd, and…an all around terrible idea. But maybe we’d be happier.”

Nick’s smile softened. “Jess, you know that’s not true.”

“No, I don’t! You don’t! Maybe… _we_ would have worked.”

“But that’s a fantasy, Jess. That’s what I was trying to do while we were there, I wanted to build a fantasy world where we could be together with no complications.”

“I should have let you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. You did the right thing by pulling me out. Fantasies aren’t sustainable. They aren’t real. And…real life is hard. But it must be worth something, because we keep living it.”

Jess looked away from him. Asking her to keep looking at him would be asking too much. He was like a beautiful, bright, burning sun, and she wanted nothing more than to melt right back onto his surface. But she couldn’t. Not if she wanted any chance of keeping him in her life.

“You’re right. I _know_ you’re right. But…fantasies are for pretending, and I want to pretend right now.”

His expression faltered, the mask slipping for a moment to reveal his true sorrow; shining even through the darkness. He quickly pulled it back up, ever the skilled actor, only for Jess.

“Okay. Okay, let’s pretend.”

Jess huffed. The words didn’t sound quite right coming out of his mouth. “I don’t know, maybe that would make it hurt more?”

“Well, I don’t want you to be in pain.”

“And I don’t want _you_ to be in pain.”

Jess managed to lift her head back up onto the pillow and stare into his deep brown eyes. “What do we do, then?”

“I wish I knew,” Nick hummed. He reached over and gently brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “We made the right call, right?”

The ‘yes’ should have been easy. Jess knew that she wanted her friend back. She knew that her and Nick’s relationship had grown more strained than ever over the past few weeks, with them either bickering or her holding her tongue as he put out buckets of raw meat and threw knives with her sister. It didn’t seem sustainable. It didn’t seem like something that would bring them any more joy than it already had. They’d wrung it out like an old rag that Nick used to clean the bar at The Griffin.

Hadn’t they?

Jess _wanted_ the ‘yes’ to roll right off her tongue. He was right. They had made the right call, for now, at least. But when she looked at him, all she could see was Mexico and his dad’s funeral and Thanksgiving in a hospital room and him saying ‘I love you’ for the first time as she headed out to see Prince. And the hallway that had separated them for so long. The one they’d been standing in when everything changed.

“Yeah,” her voice cracked, “we made the right call.”

“You know…it’s gonna be hard to stop loving you, Jessica,” Nick said. It seemed like he meant it, with the way he was now cradling the side of her face and staring at her as if it was the last time he’d ever be able to lay eyes on her.

“Don’t say that,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“I know it’ll be easy for you to move on, but-”

“No. It’ll be just as hard.”

“You promise?”

It was somewhat comforting to know that they were both desperate, hopeless trainwrecks, both with and without each other.

Jess nodded, the side of her face still pressed against the pillow. “I promise.”

“I’m sorry, then.”

“Why?”

“I just said that I don’t want you to be in pain!” Nick exclaimed, raising his voice above the almost-whisper they’d previously been speaking at.

“I know. I know. But…pain is a part of real life, right?” she said.

He sighed. Unfortunately, Jess knew that she’d won this argument.

“You’re right. It sucks, but you’re right.”

There weren’t enough words to fill the widening chasm between them. They were holding each other so close that they practically melded into one person, but it felt like Nick was already oceans away.

“I’m gonna try to sleep. Been a long day,” Jess said. Closing her eyes and drifting off to the land of the unconscious seemed like the best solution to all of her various problems, at least in this moment.

“Okay,” he murmured, planting a ghost of a kiss on the top of her head. It was most likely out of habit, which only made it all the more tragic to Jess.

“Good night, Nick. For real this time.”

“Good night, Jessica. Sweet dreams.”

He almost stayed true to his word, holding her and rubbing her back with his thumb as she drifted off to sleep. But right as she was about to slip out of the realm of consciousness, she felt his warmth slowly slip away as he untangled himself from her. And then all that was left was an empty space in her pile of blankets - one that Nick might be able to drive his long-haul truck through - and the cold. Jess shivered. It was far too cold for her to get to sleep now.

**Author's Note:**

> please share any thoughts/feelings/opinions/etc. in the comments!! narratively, I kind of get the reason for their breakup, but it still hurts way more than I even anticipated.
> 
> hope you all are having a good day/night and are staying safe!! <3


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